Book review: September 2007
When thieves made off with Edvard Munch's iconic Scream, the world was transfixed by their audacity as much as the Oslo museum's lax security, writes Timothy Mason
Stealing the Scream: The Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece
A guard, armed with an automatic rifle, stands at the entrance to the treasury at the Janashia State Museum in Tbilisi.
At the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro, blue uniformed staff, trousers gaitered over heavy boots, look more like policemen than museum assistants.
In Seville's art museum the empty, silent galleries are watched by innumerable CCTV cameras. It's not great for customer care, but the message to would-be thieves is clear.
At the other end of the spectrum stand those museums that have tried to combine the security and health-and-safety functions of gallery attendants with a more visitor-oriented role, moving away from the ominous presence of quasi-military security to the ostensibly more relaxed enthusiasm of 'museum hosts'.
Woven into the weft of Edward Dolnick's book about art theft is a deeply cynical view of the attention paid by museums to security and of the effectiveness of most of the measures that are - or perhaps aren't - in place. 'Art connoisseurs,' claims Dolnick, 'respond to art crime with the fluttery dismay of a Victorian hostess whose guests have unaccountably spoken of sex.'
Dolnick appears to stand more at the boots-and-gaiters end of the spectrum, but he recognises that there is a balance to get right - on the one hand, museums have a duty to protect their collections; on the other, there is a requirement to make them available to visitors, even those of criminal intent.
'In comparison with even middling banks in midsized cities, the world's best museums are as open as street fairs,' Dolnick writes. 'I have not knowingly met any 'museum higher-ups' who 'avert [their] eyes and hope that the whole nasty subject [of security] will go away'.
There's no denying, however, that despite efforts in this country at least, theft does happen. Dolnick quotes an Interpol estimate of some $4 to $6bn changing hands in the art underworld each year.
It's an interesting statistic, but one which needs to be handled with care, firstly because it is the sum of money reputed to be changing hands, rather than the value of museum theft, and in that sense may reflect the value of drugs or arms trading for which stolen museum objects are often used as collateral; and secondly because it includes objects stolen from private houses, churches and private galleries.
Moreover, the value of stolen art reflects the value of the open market. Two Picasso paintings stolen from the artist's grand-daughter earlier this year were valued at $68 million; it doesn't take long for the figure to mount up.
There is no gainsaying the fact that the theft of Edvard Munch's Skrik (The Scream) in the early morning of 12 February 1994 was something of a doddle.
Two men, a ladder, a hammer to break the glass of a window, and a pair of wire-cutters, nothing sophisticated here. In place of the painting, the thieves had left a postcard. Its message only added to the embarrassment of the museum authorities - 'Thanks for the poor security'.
This is the starting point of Dolnick's meandering tale of the search for the painting. More of a magazine story than a book of over 200 pages, the story inches forward before disappearing down a series of detours.
Its hero, and he is, for Dolnick, nothing less, is Charley Hill, the acknowledged master of art theft recovery with a line of impressive notches on his belt. Stealing the Scream is a prolonged panegyric to Hill. 'If the would-be priest [Hill spent two years in a seminary] could not save souls for all eternity, at least he could do his best to save some of mankind's greatest creations for the next few centuries.'
What Hill makes of this is not recorded, although 'with a sense of mocking self-awareness', he is quoted as feeling like 'some kind of St George. The thieves are the dragon, and these paintings are the damsel about to be eaten'.
Stealing the Scream was first published in the United States two years ago, it was called The Rescue Artist, a direct reference to its protagonist. Somewhere along the way, its title was changed.
It was a mistake, for what Dolnick has written is less the story of the recovery of Munch's masterpiece and more a eulogy to Hill, with the recovery of The Scream as one example of the art detective's many successes. Read from that perspective, Dolnick's diversionary narrative becomes slightly less frustrating.
Either way the book's insights into the murky world of art theft are informative. There are innumerable references to Dr No, the 1962 James Bond film in which Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington, then missing from the National Gallery, is shown to be in the collection of the film's eponymous villain.
Dr No himself doesn't make an appearance, but Dolnick can rely on a cast of real-life villains, including Pal Enger, a former footballer turned thief, who makes only a fleeting appearance in the book before somewhat unexpectedly emerging, as one of the two men on the ladder and the leader of the small gang behind the robbery.
Something of a prankster, when his son was born two months after the theft, Enger announced in an Oslo paper that the baby had arrived 'with a Scream'.
The theft of The Scream coincided with the opening of the Lillehammer Winter Olympics. It had the effect of diverting attention of the world's media from winter sports to art theft.
It was an event that left a vivid scar, only made more so by the theft of another version of The Scream (there are four) ten years later, recovered in 2006. As Oscar Wilde might have put it, 'to lose one might be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness'.
No wonder perhaps, when during a recent call to Norway's reconfigured National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, I mentioned I was reading Stealing the Scream, a chill Norwegian wind blew momentarily through an otherwise warm conversation.
Timothy Mason is an arts and heritage consultant
A guard, armed with an automatic rifle, stands at the entrance to the treasury at the Janashia State Museum in Tbilisi.
At the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro, blue uniformed staff, trousers gaitered over heavy boots, look more like policemen than museum assistants.
In Seville's art museum the empty, silent galleries are watched by innumerable CCTV cameras. It's not great for customer care, but the message to would-be thieves is clear.
At the other end of the spectrum stand those museums that have tried to combine the security and health-and-safety functions of gallery attendants with a more visitor-oriented role, moving away from the ominous presence of quasi-military security to the ostensibly more relaxed enthusiasm of 'museum hosts'.
Woven into the weft of Edward Dolnick's book about art theft is a deeply cynical view of the attention paid by museums to security and of the effectiveness of most of the measures that are - or perhaps aren't - in place. 'Art connoisseurs,' claims Dolnick, 'respond to art crime with the fluttery dismay of a Victorian hostess whose guests have unaccountably spoken of sex.'
Dolnick appears to stand more at the boots-and-gaiters end of the spectrum, but he recognises that there is a balance to get right - on the one hand, museums have a duty to protect their collections; on the other, there is a requirement to make them available to visitors, even those of criminal intent.
'In comparison with even middling banks in midsized cities, the world's best museums are as open as street fairs,' Dolnick writes. 'I have not knowingly met any 'museum higher-ups' who 'avert [their] eyes and hope that the whole nasty subject [of security] will go away'.
There's no denying, however, that despite efforts in this country at least, theft does happen. Dolnick quotes an Interpol estimate of some $4 to $6bn changing hands in the art underworld each year.
It's an interesting statistic, but one which needs to be handled with care, firstly because it is the sum of money reputed to be changing hands, rather than the value of museum theft, and in that sense may reflect the value of drugs or arms trading for which stolen museum objects are often used as collateral; and secondly because it includes objects stolen from private houses, churches and private galleries.
Moreover, the value of stolen art reflects the value of the open market. Two Picasso paintings stolen from the artist's grand-daughter earlier this year were valued at $68 million; it doesn't take long for the figure to mount up.
There is no gainsaying the fact that the theft of Edvard Munch's Skrik (The Scream) in the early morning of 12 February 1994 was something of a doddle.
Two men, a ladder, a hammer to break the glass of a window, and a pair of wire-cutters, nothing sophisticated here. In place of the painting, the thieves had left a postcard. Its message only added to the embarrassment of the museum authorities - 'Thanks for the poor security'.
This is the starting point of Dolnick's meandering tale of the search for the painting. More of a magazine story than a book of over 200 pages, the story inches forward before disappearing down a series of detours.
Its hero, and he is, for Dolnick, nothing less, is Charley Hill, the acknowledged master of art theft recovery with a line of impressive notches on his belt. Stealing the Scream is a prolonged panegyric to Hill. 'If the would-be priest [Hill spent two years in a seminary] could not save souls for all eternity, at least he could do his best to save some of mankind's greatest creations for the next few centuries.'
What Hill makes of this is not recorded, although 'with a sense of mocking self-awareness', he is quoted as feeling like 'some kind of St George. The thieves are the dragon, and these paintings are the damsel about to be eaten'.
Stealing the Scream was first published in the United States two years ago, it was called The Rescue Artist, a direct reference to its protagonist. Somewhere along the way, its title was changed.
It was a mistake, for what Dolnick has written is less the story of the recovery of Munch's masterpiece and more a eulogy to Hill, with the recovery of The Scream as one example of the art detective's many successes. Read from that perspective, Dolnick's diversionary narrative becomes slightly less frustrating.
Either way the book's insights into the murky world of art theft are informative. There are innumerable references to Dr No, the 1962 James Bond film in which Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington, then missing from the National Gallery, is shown to be in the collection of the film's eponymous villain.
Dr No himself doesn't make an appearance, but Dolnick can rely on a cast of real-life villains, including Pal Enger, a former footballer turned thief, who makes only a fleeting appearance in the book before somewhat unexpectedly emerging, as one of the two men on the ladder and the leader of the small gang behind the robbery.
Something of a prankster, when his son was born two months after the theft, Enger announced in an Oslo paper that the baby had arrived 'with a Scream'.
The theft of The Scream coincided with the opening of the Lillehammer Winter Olympics. It had the effect of diverting attention of the world's media from winter sports to art theft.
It was an event that left a vivid scar, only made more so by the theft of another version of The Scream (there are four) ten years later, recovered in 2006. As Oscar Wilde might have put it, 'to lose one might be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness'.
No wonder perhaps, when during a recent call to Norway's reconfigured National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, I mentioned I was reading Stealing the Scream, a chill Norwegian wind blew momentarily through an otherwise warm conversation.
Timothy Mason is an arts and heritage consultant
Stealing the Scream: The Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece By Edward Dolnick
Icon Books, £12.99
ISBN: 1 84046 792 4
Icon Books, £12.99
ISBN: 1 84046 792 4